I occasionally get called by clients reporting performance issues with their DS3000, DS4000 or DS5000s at 2am in the morning (always at roughly the same time). It’s a curious (and annoying) time to have issues but it usually has a simple solution, so I thought I would share a tip regarding how this can happen and how you can avoid it.

It all starts if you install DS Storage Manager version 10.60.x5.17 or higher (up to 10.77.xx but not 10.83.xx). During install you will get an extra piece of software called the Support Monitor. You can spot this by choosing the Custom install option:

By default this Support Monitor automatically schedules profile and support data collections at 2am. This in itself is not a problem. The problem starts if multiple copies of the Client are used to manage the same storage subsystems and the default collection time is not unique for each Client. To give a typical situation: Lets assume everyone in your support team installs the Storage Manager on their workstations (which is quite normal) and all of those workstations are still running at 2am (this depends on whether people turn their PCs and laptops off). Multiple requests will come to the storage subsystem too close together, causing performance issues as it tries to process them all at the same time. This issue is documented in Retain tip H196538 which you can read here.

So I suggest you follow the resolution steps documented in the tip. Frankly I would not bother to install the Support Monitor on any of your clients. If already installed, you can uninstall it from the control panel (as per this example from a Windows XP machine):

Now the good news is that things have changed in version 10.83.xx.18 or higher. There is a tip on this here (which also documents a vulnerability in the earlier versions of the DS Storage Manager). In short the Support Monitor has been removed as a separate application and moved into the Enterprise Management panel as shown in this screen capture from the 10.83 version of the DS Storage Manager:

You can set a schedule on a machine by machine basis. Amusingly the default is still 2am:

So what do you need to do? Two choices:

If you are running DS Storage Manager version 10.6x.xx or 10.7x.xx then either uninstall the Profile Collector (my preferred option) or disable it (you can logon to http://127.0.0.1:9000 as admin with a password of admin to do this).

Upgrade to DS Storage Manager 10.8x.xx or higher (at time of writing 10.83.G5.18). Then manually set collection schedules only if needed (but also check to ensure no schedules exist). When I tested it, no schedules were created by default, which is a good thing. You download it from IBM FixCentral.

Any questions, please drop me a comment or send me an email.

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About Anthony Vandewerdt

I am an IT Professional who lives and works in Melbourne Australia.
This blog is totally my own work.
It does not represent the views of any corporation.
Constructive and useful comments are very very welcome.

I have now (through last weekend) caused the release of Storwize FW 6.4.0.1 and the withdrawal of DS3500 DS_fw_v7.83.18.00

:-) The first one (6.4.0.0 DS3000/DS4000 bug) was not a pleasant one to say the least.
The DS3500 is has only been annoying so far. Hopefully They will release an update that won’t force me to wipe the config on the controllers.